London Restaurants ..Cafeterias

A cafeteria is a London restaurant serving mostly ready-cooked food arranged behind a food-serving counter. There is little or no table service. Typically, a patron takes a tray and pushes it along a track in front of the counter. Depending on the establishment, servings may be ordered from attendants, selected as ready-made portions already on plates, or self-serve their own portions. In some establishments a few items, such as steaks, may be ordered specially prepared from the attendants. The patron waits for those items to be prepared or is given a number and they are brought to the table. Beverages may be filled from self-service dispensers or ordered from the attendants. At the end of the line a cashier rings up the purchases. At some self-service cafeterias, purchases are priced by weight, rather than by individual item.

The trays are taken to a table to eat. Institutional cafeterias may have common tables, but upscale and posh cafeterias provide individual tables as in sit-down restaurants. Upscale cafeterias have traditional cutlery and crockery , and some have servers to carry the trays from the line to the patrons' tables, and/or bus the empty trays and used dishes. A cafeteria differs from a "fast food" restaurant in that it will have a wider variety of prepared foods. For example, it may have a variety of roasts (beef, ham, turkey) ready for carving by a server, as well as other cooked entrées, rather than simply an offering of hamburgers or fried chicken. A cafeteria is a type of food service location in which there is little or no table service, whether a restaurant or within an institution such as a large office building or school ; a school dining location is also referred to as a canteen or dining hall . Cafeterias are different from coffee shops , although that is the Spanish meaning of the American word.

Instead of table service, there are food-serving counters/stalls, either in a line or allowing arbitrary walking paths. Customers take the food they require as they walk along, placing it on a tray . In addition, there are often stations where customers order food and wait while it is prepared, particularly for items such as hamburgers or tacos which must be served hot and can be quickly prepared. Alternatively, the patron is given a number and the item is brought to their table. Sometimes, for some food items and drinks, customers collect an empty container, pay at the check-out, and fill the container after the check-out. Free second servings are often allowed under this system. For legal purposes (and the consumption patterns of customers), this system is rarely or never used for alcoholic beverages.

Customers are either charged a flat rate for admission (as in a buffet ), or pay at the check-out for each item. Some self-service cafeterias charge by the weight of items on a patron's plate.

As cafeterias require few employees, they are often found within a larger institution, catering to the clientele of that institution. For example, schools , colleges and their residence halls , department stores , hospitals , museums , and office buildings often have cafeterias.

At one time, upscale or posh cafeteria-style restaurants dominated the culture of the Southern United States , and to a lesser extent the Midwest . There were several prominent chains of them: Bickford's , Morrison's Cafeteria , Piccadilly Cafeteria Apple House , K&W , Britling , and Blue Boar among them. Currently two still exist, Sloppy Jo's Lunchrooms and Manny's, both located in Illinois . There were also a number of smaller chains, usually in and around a single city. These institutions, with the exception of K&W, went into a decline in the 1960s with the rise of fast food and were largely finished off in the 1980s by the rise of " casual dining ". A few chains - notably Luby's and Piccadilly Cafeterias (which took over the Morrison's chain), continue to fill some of the gap left by the decline of the older chains. Many of the smaller Midwestern chains, such as MCL Cafeterias centered on Indianapolis , are still very much in business.